Opening Day with the Padres and Fox Sports San Diego Was Amazing…

That’s an aerial shot from the Diamond View Tower Ultimate Skybox. I was invited by Fox Sports San Diego to their pre-party for Opening Day and it was amazing. I can’t even tell you how legit the view was from up there. Breathtaking, really… and kinda scary. Here’s the park at the park.

I was standing out on the balcony when a nice older gentleman approached me, and we began chatting about the view and baseball season. He was very nice, and after a couple minutes, I realized I was talking with Padres owner Ron Fowler. He’d never been up on that balcony before either. So, there I was, in flip-flops and a t-shirt (you know the one, you made fun of me for it), chatting the Padres owner. Turns out I was just getting started with the cool people I’d get to see/meet/hang out with. I’ve already been accused once today of name-dropping, so this’ll be round 2.

I got to speak quite a bit with both Padres President/CEO Tom Garfinkel, and Henry Ford, Senior VP/General Manager of Fox Sports San Diego. Both great dudes. Very down to earth, very easy to chat with. I got some incredible insight from Tom into the Padres decision to move in the fences… info for a later blog post. Trevor Hoffman was there. Mark Loretta was there. I got to speak for a few minutes with Randy Jones and his lovely wife. She was laughing at everything I said and told me that her daughter would love me. Haha. While we spoke, former Padres President Dick Freeman joined us in the conversation, and I listened while he and Randy swapped old stories.

The FSSD Girls were there, and a I got meet a hand full of the PadSquad girls as well. I really enjoyed chatting Vice President Ticket Sales, Service & Operations, Jeremy Walls. He’s got a daughter a few months older than mine, so we had a lot in common. I also saw the owner of Ace Parking. His name is Scott Jones (no relation to Randy) and he must have recently had a face lift or something because he was looking really weird. Huge earring holes in his lobes, and he wore black eyeliner all around his eyes. Tripped me out for a dude in his 70′s… maybe 80′s.

Everybody had cool name tags on them… and lapel pins. Sorry to say that even a neat name tag couldn’t church up my Dumb & Dumber Lobshots t-shirt.

I snapped a picture so you’d actually believe they invited a scrub blogger like me. After about 3 Jack and Cokes I said my thank-yous and good-byes and headed to meet my buddies at Tivoli before we walked over to the game.

Once the game got underway, it was incredible. I don’t have the energy to walk you through a play-by-play of the events of the game… but I really enjoyed the Petco experience for this Opening Day. We even took an inning off from live action to grab some grub at Hodad’s.

That’s J Dot, me, and Tommy in the Hodad’s van which was magically open for us. Second straight Opening Day that I’ve crushed a burger and beers in that bad boy. Great day. Great win for the Padres. Here’s to more home wins… and less 1-5 road trips.